Remove us from the front at your peril, say women soldiers

As the war in Afghanistan claims its first British female fatality, the debate about the role of women in war zones has been reopened. But the message from the 1,600 women in Afghanistan and Iraq is clear: mutiny would follow any attempts to withdraw them from danger. Mark Townsend reports

Her 'girls' called it roadside roulette - the lottery of the landmines and bombs that haunt the highways of Helmand province where Captain Alli Shields spent months squinting through the Afghan dust clouds for the tell-tale signs of hidden explosives.

Last week the bombers struck again, taking the life of Corporal Sarah Bryant, Britain's first female fatality in Afghanistan, another bleak milestone and one that not only raised familiar questions of whether British women should serve on the front line, but also on whether they could handle the unique challenges that Helmand presents.

For Shields, 39, the reaction to the death of Bryant from a largely male-dominated media was a shock. Until last week she and her friends had assumed the debate about women being able to handle the pressures of war had been laid to rest. Yesterday the message from the 1,600 women currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan was that mutiny would ensue if attempts were made to remove them from the front line. Any moves by the Ministry of Defence to withdraw British women from danger would be fiercely resisted, they said. Some warned it would precipitate an exodus at a time the undermanned armed forces are coping with two major conflicts, insisting they would rather resign from the military than endure a career where they were ordered out of harm's way.

'It would be like going back in time,' said Shields, of the Royal Logistic Corps, who has served a total of 18 months in Iraq and Afghanistan. 'Some of the girls would choose to fall on their swords rather than be denied the chance to serve where it matters. They have already proved they can cut it.'

The MoD still clings to the official line that women are barred from infantry roles where the main job is 'to close with and kill the enemy', in essence frontline fighting with weapons. Yet 26-year-old Bryant's death exposed the MoDs restrictions as both outdated and irrelevant, an anachronism more redolent of the poppy fields of Flanders than Helmand. Upon the asymmetric battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan the danger starts when women leave base. The enemy is everywhere. There are no front lines. The danger in Helmand is not from intense hand-to-hand fighting, it is simply being there.

Shields confirms that every day British women are fighting in Afghanistan not only to survive, but to kill. She concedes it is a reality to which most of the British public is oblivious. 'It doesn't matter whether women are allowed to join the infantry or not. Girls are fighting the enemy in one way or another every day,' said Shields. 'It really annoys me when you see people on television talking about the front line in Afghanistan. Everybody is at risk, even the chef inside a base, whether it's from a bullet, a landmine or a bomb.'

Among the women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the coverage last week of Bryant's death was intensely unsettling. Shields admits that she felt extremely uncomfortable that while front pages were emblazoned with huge images of Bryant in her bridal gown, coverage of the three male SAS reservists who died with her, Corporal Sean Robert Reeve, Lance Corporal Richard Larkin and Paul Stout, was reduced to small portrait shots. For Shields it felt that while women themselves were comfortable being shot at in Helmand, society's attitude to female troops in war remained trapped in time.

'There should be no reason why the loss of a women's life is different from that of a man,' she said. 'I felt sorry for the three men who died. There was hardly any fuss about them, all the attention was on the loss of the girl. I find that very condescending, the implicit notion that women shouldn't be there, that they couldn't do the same job. Yet the fact that a girl died alongside three guys just shows they could do the same job and that they took the same risks.'

Yesterday the family of Corporal Reeve, from Brighton, released a statement describing the 28-year-old reservist as having 'no illusions that he was being asked to do a dangerous job in a dangerous place'. The youngest of three children, Reeve kept asking for spare pens and pencils to be sent to the local Afghan school because they had none. The statement added: 'He said how lucky we all were to live in the UK.' Reeve, his family said, had signed up to experience life rather than seek 'glory or medals'.

For Shields, being fired upon and defending themselves is the norm for any of the 18,000 women in the armed forces asked to serve in Afghanistan. None, she says, has buckled during the frenetic chaos of a firefight.

'Everybody has the same training, the same kit, the same job as the boys. Shields joined the Royal Logistic Corp in the Eighties when women were classified as non-combatants. Like Bryant, she served two six-month tours in Iraq. In her 21 years of service, Shields also served in Northern Ireland and Helmand during 21 years of service. Iraq during the peak of the insurgency was demanding, she says. But Helmand is entirely different.

When news of Bryant's death broke last Wednesday, it emerged that there had appeared to be a grim inevitability that her life would be ended not by the precise aim of a fellow human but by the indiscriminate horror of a hidden bomb. Among the women serving in Helmand it was the mines that provoked most fear. Shields regularly took part in the 50-vehicle supply convoys that wound north from the main British base, Camp Bastion, to the small forward-operating bases north in the Helmand Valley.

Only 30km to Sangin, the journey took 20 hours with men and women taking turns to drive and operate the machine guns. Every time they took a different route because of the threat from mines. 'We didn't have enough helicopters and there was a mine threat,' she said. 'Vehicles would get stuck in the sand, the temperature was 50C. At the time there was fighting all over the Sangin valley.' Three times her convoy came across deadly roadside explosives. 'The desert is covered with them,' she said. 'They are all over the place and that really preyed on your mind.'

Such inherent dangers fail to inspire trepidation in the women who serve in Afghanistan and Iraq. On the contrary. Shields's six-month tour in Helmand last summer, a period of brutal fighting during which 33 British troops died, was unanimously voted as the 'best ever experience' by the professionals she served with. 'We were doing what we were meant to,' she said. 'Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a fantastic six months.'

Those privy to the challenges of Iraq and Afghanistan often admit they are surprised to find women operating where the risks appear highest. In Sangin last summer, female intelligence officers could be found calmly dissecting information while the sound of enemy rockets hissed above. 'Keeping your head is the first thing you learn,' added Shields.

Bryant's death also offered a glimpse into other pressures facing servicewomen. From their wedding day in 2006, Bryant and husband Carl, like his wife a member of the Intelligence Corps, would spend just six months at home together, and the remainder apart in war zones. Shields accepts that the job entails sacrifice. Her husband, Tom, whom she married as a teenager 18 years ago finds it hardest. 'My husband was in the army and knows the score. On the flip side, he knows the risks.'

Despite crucial roles during the Second World War, it was only in the early 1990s that traditional gender barriers began to crumble. Separate branches of the military for women - the Wrens for the Navy and Wracs for the Army - were scrapped and women no longer had to resign from the forces when they became pregnant. Yet even now, military sources claim to have opposition within its own ranks to the idea of women having a wider role.

Yet more prosaic issues increasingly matter. With the Armed Forces understaffed, barring women from the dangers in Helmand would exacerbate shortages. Senior commanders last week explained that women had performed a pivotal role in the twin conflicts of Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet some still question whether they can perform where it matters. Scour the military's internet message boards in the wake of Bryant's death and stereotypical concerns are soon evident.

One wrote: 'I've yet to see a woman who could withstand the mental and physical pressure of infantry work even on exercise where kit shortages and ammo budgets restricted the load troops carried.' Another, this time a woman whose two sisters had also served in Afghanistan, said: 'I don't meant to be harsh to my own sex but what from what they tell me, most women couldn't hack it.'

But these, Shields argue, ignore what women have already proved. Iraq has so far claimed the lives of five British servicewomen. Many mention private Michelle Norris, who crawled under sniper fire to rescue her seriously wounded male sergeant. She was awarded the Military Cross, the first woman to be awarded the top military honour for gallantry.

Perhaps it was deliberate that Bryant's grieving husband called his wife a 'hero' last week rather than 'heroine' to underline the point that courage was not tied to gender. Shields would agree entirely. 'I'm busting my gut at the minute trying to get on the next deployment to Afghanistan,' she said. 'If they asked, I'd be out there like a shot.'